BlackBasta Ransomware Group Targets Tower Fasteners

The BlackBasta ransomware group has allegedly attacked Tower Fasteners. Tower Fasteners is a fastener distributor boasting nine locations worldwide and is headquartered in Holtsville, New York, USA. BlackBasta claims to have stolen confidential and personally identifiable information (PII) from Tower Fasteners. The organization has neither confirmed nor denied the attack.

Emergence of BlackBasta

BlackBasta is a more recent RaaS (Ransomware-as-a-Service) player that first emerged in early 2022 and is assessed by some researchers to be a revival of the Conti and REvil attack groups. Considering they had just emerged in the spring of 2022, BlackBasta quickly became one of the most prolific attack groups, with more than 100 known victims. Ransom demands vary depending on the targeted organization, with reports that they can be as high as $2 million dollars.

Evolution of BlackBasta's RaaS Platform

BlackBasta continues to evolve its RaaS platform, with ransomware payloads that can infect systems running both Windows and Linux systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in VMware ESXi running on enterprise servers and uses both ChaCha20 and RSA-4096 for rapid encryption of the targeted network. In some cases, it leverages malware strains like Qakbot and exploits like PrintNightmare during the infection process. Black Basta also employs a double extortion scheme and maintains an active leaks website where they post exfiltrated data if an organization declines to pay the ransom demand.